Former Apollo astronaut soared where few dared

Tuesday

Apr 9, 2013 at 12:01 AM

STOCKTON - He might easily have been the first man on the moon.

Alex Breitler

STOCKTON - He might easily have been the first man on the moon.

Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Stafford traveled all but the last nine miles of the 238,900-mile journey, orbiting the moon as commander of the Apollo 10 mission just months before Neil Armstrong took those celebrated steps.

While Stafford did not claim that distinction, he was recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as having attained the greatest speed of any human being - 24,791 mph, upon re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere.

And he can tell some great stories, some of which he'll undoubtedly share when he speaks to the Stockton Astronomical Society on Thursday. The public is invited.

"What amazed me was the size of the boulders" on the moon, upon which he gazed while passing overhead, Stafford told historians with the Kennedy Space Center in 1997. "They were awesome, these big ones, you know, huge things. Some of them are pure white with black striations upon the side of these gigantic craters. I said, 'Oh, they'd have to be as big as a two- or three-story building.

"It turns out those things are bigger than the Astrodome."

Landing as a guest speaker an elite astronaut such as Stafford - whose hometown of Weatherford, Okla., has a museum in his name - may seem unlikely for Stockton's relatively small circle of astronomy geeks.

Manteca optometrist Michael Lavieri stumbled on the chance last year. Attending a family wedding, Lavieri ran into his cousin, Joe Sciabica, who grew up in Manteca and went on to become a chemical engineer and a civilian employee of the Air Force.

Lavieri asked his cousin to speak to the club sometime.

Sciabica's wife leaned in and said, "Why would you want Joe when you could have a real astronaut?"

Turns out Sciabica met Stafford at an awards ceremony attended by high-profile astronauts in Washington.

Sciabica inquired, and Stafford agreed.

"I'm just extremely thrilled," Lavieri said. "In my wildest dreams I never thought this could happen ... (Stafford) is a true American hero."

An Air Force pilot, Stafford had enrolled at the Harvard Business School when the opportunity came to apply to be an astronaut. President John F. Kennedy had laid out his grand vision of landing on the moon, and Stafford was game.

Those early astronauts didn't know who would be the first to land there.

It could well have been Apollo 10, which was the first mission to the moon to include a lunar module.

But that first module proved too heavy to land.

So the crew did everything but land, orbiting the moon and swooping down to a low-enough level to test the landing radar, helping to pave the way for Armstrong and Apollo 11.

Stafford was in space twice previously, with the Gemini program. He also participated in the historic 1975 joint space flight between the Americans and the Soviets.